The Microsoft Police State: Mass Surveillance, Facial Recognition, and the Azure Cloud
Microsoft helps police surveil and patrol communities through its own offerings and a network of partnerships — while its PR efforts obscure this.
Technology
Protests for Black Lives
Police Surveilled George Floyd Protests With Help From Twitter-Affiliated Startup Dataminr
Artificial intelligence firm Dataminr is making questionable use of its Twitter firehose privileges — and not for the first time.
Controversial Data-Mining Firm Palantir Vanishes From Biden Adviser's Biography After She Joins Campaign
Within a few days of joining the Biden campaign, the biography of former top intelligence official Avril Haines no longer listed her work for Palantir.
Protests for Black Lives
FBI Expands Ability to Collect Cellphone Location Data, Monitor Social Media, Recent Contracts Show
Recent contracts with Dataminr and Venntel show a growing focus on harnessing the latest private sector tools for mass surveillance.
Weeks After PTSD Settlement, Facebook Moderators Ordered to Spend More Time Viewing Online Child Abuse
Contractor Accenture has added 48 minutes to the shifts of many moderators in North America.
Protesters, Here's How to Set Up a Cheap Burner Phone
The Intercept's security director shows how to safeguard a secondary Android phone for an anti-police protest.
Facebook Pitched New Tool Allowing Employers to Suppress Words Like “Unionize" in Workplace Chat Product
Facebook Workplace is used by employers as large as Walmart. The new tool would allow “content control” to prevent certain topics from trending internally.
Voices
Amazon "Stands in Solidarity" Against Police Racism While Selling Racist Tech to Police
The company’s vocal support for protests is contradicted by its surveillance products like Ring and Rekognition.
The Coronavirus Crisis
Coronavirus Monitoring Bracelets Flood the Market, Ready to Snitch on People Who Don’t Distance
A crop of “new” body-worn devices issue alerts about hospital patients, the quarantined, people under house arrest, and workers who fail to social distance.
The Coronavirus Crisis
There's No Telling What Data Facebook Will Collect If You Use Its Zoom Clone
Messenger Rooms won’t “watch or listen” to your calls. But Facebook won't say how it will handle metadata like who you chat with and when.